Work Diary - Fourth Shoot - Elmar Road

This session consisted of a shoot in Tottenham, where I was aiming to capture the rough, working class side of the whole residential theme I am exploring. I started off my shoot in a local park, where I manipulated the angles in each picture to make it look dodgy and unsafe, which is ironic as it was a children's park. I think this added symbolism to my work as it showed that although one would normally expect children to be safe in a park, they are not due to society and the individuals who make up that society. I tried showing this by using a small aperture, such as F11 so that the pictures come out dark and dim, emphasising on the danger that can occur. As I continued with the shoot, I moved on to a street with houses, where I was still trying to experiment with angles, allowing me to include exactly what I wanted in my images and omit what I didn't want. I found that by using angles that weren't straight, I was able to give out a bad impression of the street within the first few seconds that the viewer looks at the picture - this is because the angle makes the area look unstable, suggesting it is very risky and dangerous.

Out of the whole shoot, I think this picture is my favourite - the white wall is almost right in the middle of the picture, acting as a line cutting the image in half. I find this interesting because the half of the picture where the sofa has been left looks dodgy, whereas the other half looks like a normal, safe, clean street. This is exactly what I was trying to achieve with this image; the connotations of this is that society can be very diverse and although something may look a certain way, it may not necessarily be that way. In this case, the street looks dodgy because of the abandoned couch but it is clear to the viewer that if this particular item was not present, this image would have portrayed a perfectly safe street, with no signs of danger.

Originally, I was aiming to create a blurred effect with this image so that the viewer can concentrate more on the colours and their connotations, such as the dark green mould on the ground, showing that the park has not been looked after for a while and how it is very unhygienic due to the rubbish that is found all over the picture, but this did not quite work out as the image does not look very exciting. I think by making the image sharper, I could have made it more attractive to the viewer by allowing them to see a more sharp, crisp dark green colour on the ground, which will get them to understand what is going on in the picture.

In the future, I would like to add more symbolism to my images when shooting on location in parks around residential areas. This will give my work more meaning and allow the viewer to explore the content even more and pick our certain ideas or connotations from them. I am finding this hard as parks are very repetitive and I am focusing more on the residential area rather than the park itself. This can be overcome by framing my shot better, allowing me to include what I want to and use an angle in which I can show a specific idea and try to imply something to the viewer.